JenniCam — where nekkid met dull

People now want attention and credit, via services like FourSquare and Gowalla, for doing normal stuff.

If

you want to know who is responsible for this, and America’s addiction

to reality television, social media and the breakdown in the natural

order of information flow, I know who to blame.

She is Jennifer Kaye Ringley.

And

14 years ago today, via the site she dubbed JenniCam, she began

webcasting every freaking second of her life.

At that moment,

the “Me” generation was replaced with the “Look at Me” generation.

Attention-whoring instantly shifted from social taboo to a

normal way of life.

She used the term “lifecasting.” I use the term “lifecasting, schmife-casting.”

Start looking at me! Start looking at me!Wired notes this monumental nosedive in American entertainment and lifestyle with a tech flashback to 1996.

Imagine the Truman Show, but not even remotely interesting or entertaining.

Before JenniCam, there was an expectation that someone had to do something to be considered worth watching. Ringley broke down that wall by entertaining people by doing nothing.

While Ringley never did

anything remotely worth watching, people would have to stick with it for days and days before coming to that realization. And then, since they had invested so much time in it, they felt like they had to stick with it.

Geek Speak blogger Renè Guzman explained this notion, in the context of a good television show-gone-bad, by likening it to the Stockholm Syndrome: You are being held against your will, but you’re sorta rooting for the kidnapper.

In that way, JenniCam hijacked your free time, you liked it, and now you’ve got 12 social media accounts and plan your week around Dancing With The Stars.

We’re here for the articlesThe main highlight of JenniCam, as it was then and ever shall be

on the Web, was skin.

Writes Wired: Raised as a nudist,

19-year old Ringley installed the webcam in her dorm room at

Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College as an experiment in real-time

documentary. The site, however, became far more than an academic

exercise, attracting up to 4 million hits a day at its peak.

Ultimately, she pulled the plug, blaming PayPal’s reluctance on being used with adult sites.

If

you can’t remember those halcyon days of webcasting was all about, or if you never saw it, or if you think